Website statistics are the most important resource you have in determining how well your site is performing.  Site stats indicate whether your investment dollars are paying off as well as they should.

Not only can these statistics tell you the number of visitors and where those visitors came from; you can also discover more detailed facts such as what pages visitors viewed, how long they spent on each page, and the search engine keywords they used to find you.

There are two reasons you want to measure and analyze your site stats:

1. To measure number of visitors to your website and determine if your marketing strategy is successful.

2. To assess the actions of visitor to your website, and use that assessment to modify your website marketing strategy.

Keep these things in mind before you start monitoring your stats:

• Don’t track your stats, just for the sake of measuring. Tracking a specific statistic or trend should lead you to a goal. Set your goals and then track the numbers and make modifications towards those goals.
   
• As your company and Internet marketing goals change, the things you measure should also change.

• Before making modifications to your website or Internet marketing strategy, establish a baseline. This will insure that when you start making changes, you’ll have a frame of reference by which to track the results.
   

Terms you will need to know when analyzing site stats:
 

Hits

A hit is when a browser requests a component during a request for a webpage. A single page may register one hit or dozens of hits depending on the content of the page. For example, a page containing three pictures will register four hits – one for the page and three for the pictures.  Ignore hits!  They are overused and misunderstood. The number of hits your website gets has no bearing on the success of your website.

Visitors/Visits

Visits are the number of times your site has been accessed. Visitor numbers help you spot trends in your traffic. Therefore, you can use a monthly or quarterly report to see if visits have increased or decreased from the last period. This information will help you determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. If there is a spike in visits following the launch of an ad campaign, you can conclude that the campaign effort attracted more people to your site.

Time Spent per Visit

Time Spent per Visit refers to the average amount of time each visitor spends during a visit to your site. This can help you gauge the level of interest in your website's content. For example, a decline in the average of visits over a month or quarter may indicate that your content is out of date and needs to be updated to hold visitor interest.

Page Views

Page Views show the number of successful requests for pages logged during the specified time period. Page Views help you identify potential problems. For example, you may find that despite an increase in visits, Page Views are declining. This may indicate that your Internet marketing efforts are drawing people to your site, but that site design or content is not keeping them.  Or you may notice that visitors spend a longer period of time on some pages, and little time on other pages.

Entry Pages

Entry Pages show which pages visitors are using or finding when they first access your website. This can help you identify which pages are of particular interest to your visitors, and which pages are being found via search engines. Pages listed that are not the expected entry points, may indicate pages on your website users consider important enough to bookmark.  Knowing which pages are of interest to your customers can help you redesign your site to improve navigation to other pages with content that may be of similar interest.

Exit Pages

Exit Pages show which pages are the last pages visitors view before leaving your site.  If you want to draw customers into your site, then the default page, home page, main menus should be your least common exit pages. Download pages, purchase pages, and contact pages should be your most common exit points.

Monitoring Exit Pages can help you evaluate the content on your site. Let's say, most visitors leave after viewing your home page, you may need to update the content or provide better links to other pages on your site.  You may also want to know if links to other websites are directing potential customers away from your site.

Referrers or Referring Sites

The Referring Sites report shows which domains are sending visitors to your site and can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your Internet marketing efforts in establishing inbound links to your website.  You may notice that there is a directory that is sending a lot of traffic to your site, and therefore decide to get listed on other similar directories.

Referrals by Search Engine

Referrals by Search Engine shows which search engines have sent visitors to your site and is a great tool in monitoring your search engine optimization efforts.

Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that visitors used on search engines to find your website. The right keywords for your site are the relevant keywords that your prospects would use in a search engine.  Looking at the keywords already used by visitors to your site can be a valuable tool and show you what keywords or phrases to concentrate on and improve the chances that a similar search will result in additional site visitors. 

Check with the company that hosts your website to see what type of statistics are available.  Most offer basic stats for free and more advanced data for a monthly free.

There are many companies that can provide you with detailed stats for your site, for a monthly fee.  Google Analytics is also a great tool to track your stats, and the service is offered for free.

Let us know if you need help getting started!